6 Japanese War Crimes during World War II Allied command who ­were unaware the ships carried their own troops. Ten ­ percent of ­ these POWs—3,526, to be exact—­died before the war ended they drowned at sea, starved, or ­were beaten to death while being exploited by Japa­nese companies.40 The treatment of POWs by the Japa­nese soldiers was extreme and surpris- ing to many, ­ because Japan was considered to have set an example of how to treat POWs, especially during the first conflicts of the 20th ­ century such as the Russo-­Japanese War (1904–1905) and the First World War (1914–1918).41 Even harsher, however, was the treatment of Asian civilians who ­ were also regularly exploited by Japa­nese troops. Estimations list up to half a million Southeast Asian ­people being mobilized for Japa­nese construction proj­ects, due to which many of them died a horrible death amidst the whips and insults of the soldiers who supervised and mistreated them in the name of the emperor.42 To name another example, Chinese laborers ­were also forced to work in Japan nearly a quarter of them died by the end of the war.43 Japa­nese officials, however, claim that ­these ­people ­were recruits who had voluntarily deci­ded to serve in Japan. The same argument was used in addressing the claims of former sex slaves, the so-­called “comfort ­women” who ­were forced into prostitution by the Japa­nese army. Although the list of war crimes could be continued ­here, the issue of comfort ­women ­shall be discussed briefly.44 American scholar Ustinia Dolgopol was right when she emphasized that “[t]he history of the comfort ­ women is the story of voices being denied and suppressed,”45 as for years nobody would follow the leads that would have demanded attention on the issue. When the first survivors testified, the Japa­ nese government ignored the truth of their accounts. While the Japa­nese Embassy in South ­ Korea has “acknowledged the comfort ­ women issue and extended official apologies on many impor­tant occasions,” the survivors themselves “reject such statements on the grounds that ­these gestures ­were short in both legitimacy and reparations.”46 The ­ matter of a formal Japa­nese apology to former “comfort ­women” (ianfu) is a “hot-­button issue in the Far East,”47 regularly causing tension between China and ­ Korea on one side and Japan on the other. The prob­lem involves not only the issue of a formal apol- ogy, but is also affected by memory policies and nationalism within the three countries involved. When former comfort ­women testified before the U.S. Congress in 1996 demanding that the American government put pressure on Japan to acknowledge the Japa­nese army’s responsibility in forcing young Korean and Chinese ­ women into prostitution, the issue became global and has remained so ever since.48 Of course, the fact that up to 200,000 ­women ­ were forced to be prostitutes—­being sexually abused, beaten, and even killed by Japa­nese soldiers—is an issue that ­ causes tension, especially ­ because Japan tends to neglect the ­matter without accepting guilt about its military plans to establish the comfort system since the early 1930s. ­Women and girls ­were
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